Starbucks on Vine Street. 

Of course the music isn’t working.  Rather than let a mood land, I embrace everything around me.  Not so much embrace but study… these older men talking politics, health care, the debates, socialized medicine, nothing I’m interested in.  I’m more prone to study the baristas, and how quick they make everything.  How their system, these kids, is so flawless and efficient.  Many of my aims over the past couple days I didn’t appease, or hit.  So now I do in reverse.  Rather tan make a list of things I’ve planned on doing, or plan on doing, catalogue and inventory what you’ve done.  I’ve sat to write.  Hoping to finish or actually start the ‘A…E’ piece.  Written much of it in my head, but not typed a thing.  Being an Account Executive has little to do with merely the accounts, and rather than be anything executive your self treat each existing and prospective client as executive.  In fact go beyond that, far beyond that.  The ‘good neighbor’ ideology.  And it being about everything, the AE life itself, begs and challenges one to incorporate everything into your practice.  Not re-write who you are, but be more creative in your approaches to conversations, prospecting, everything.

Since becoming an AE, I’ve seen sales differently.  I’ve blended past me’s from other professions such as teaching at the JC and working at wineries (like I’m set to do today), and just do so in different containment. It’s about everything, being an AE… being a speaker, a personal organizer, a writer, a negotiator yes but more a connector of ideas.

I have to stop in this idea blaze and note the music is working, so now much more beat in my key slaps.  Hoping to surpass 2000 words in this sitting.

About everything…. Everything you are and want to do, want to see in your story.  I’ve noted before I’d like to have my own sales & marketing agency, stemming from blogging about my AE observations and educational echoes.  Starting the week with prospecting targets, taking notes on them, setting calendar reminders….  You’ll find that time not only becomes a factor in the AE story, but it frames everything.  Become an astute steward of your hours and days, the blocks on the calendar, and everything becomes music, or whatever you love.  Make the AE step and beat whatever you wish it be.  Don’t overthink… and in some cases don’t think at all.  Follow impulse, measured and calculated chance.  In this being about everything, it is about YOU, and everything you are and were before have the Account Executive tag….

Sat to write, started notes on the AE piece, which I’ll submit to Mark and see what he thinks, or not submit it expecting reaction, but just so I know (!!!) he has my thoughts, and my musings on AE life are documented.

Transferred monies.  Going to follow through with wine blog idea, ‘vinovinevin’, and that will be the last blog url I purchased for years, as I can see.  More writing, less fixation on blogs and tech… that’s another thing for the AE pages…

Don’t get wrapped in the tech of it all.  A basic or slightly more than beginner’s vocal on the involved technology is beneficial, but this is a story about you and your connectedness to business owners… other human beings.  Like a colleague told me, “People buy from people they like.” So true.  More than true.  It’s, as I estimate, a prime and principle premise for what we do.  It’s law.

 

8:50am.  Could fit in another 35 minutes or so.  The baristas continue with their ninja moves behind that bar.  They just make drink after drink with tireless smiles on their faces.  How do they do that.  What is their formula for their mood, and how sped they move, swiftly like gravity and physical laws are only something to consider.  I enjoy the music, an older Thievery track, and look up… lady with her daughter, daughter gets up to use restroom and mom on phone, looks like texting someone.  I start to miss my kids but don’t let my sensibilities be tugged one way or another, even toward my babies.

Young lady sits down at table, far end away from me with laptop.  Then does something on phone.

Aims for day … sell at least a case of wine.

Know I said I wouldn’t do this, but I’m going to….

Another, three blog posts, to any of the three blogs—

Interrupted by a former, or I guess still current co-worker at Foley, Chris T.  Customer Service Operations Manager.  Syllabic title, no spite.  He was  and still is one of the people I respect most in the organization, and even he agrees that when you can be in the wine industry as I am, NOW, and just enjoy it and have fun that’s how one should enjoy wine, and be with wine, interact with her.

New beat into ears, sip latte.  All of today has to be music, with beat, notes, a certain key.  Young lady in front of me jotting something onto page, spiral-bound notebook.  Definitely a student… think she’s writing an essay, or that’s what I write her doing.  This 100k project, an essay project.  By the end of it, less than 94k away, I’ll be living by my essays in tandem with Sonic, “teaching”, and the wine project…. Then I have another idea, that vinovinevin be a wine blog from a tasting room person’s perspective.  Not sure what that means or how that will be connotated, but I know what I’m thinking…. Talking to people, same as with the AE story, ask them questions about their story, what brought them there… don’t sell so much, or try to sell.  Essays are not proposals, they aren’t even necessarily proclamations.  I see essays as views, a confirmation of sight, of conviction, or curiosity.  This beat has me writing like an avalanche, one that won’t stop even when it reaches flats.

Much needed phronesis.